Picking Up Your Human Pieces
by chespin
Summary: Jason's back from the dead. It's not a happy reunion. — vignette series, pre-season two divergence.
1. oil change

disclaimer: don't own a thing.  
warning: language.  
notes: jason returns, drama happens. irregular updates and very little sense to be made. :D

* * *

There's dirt under his fingernails when Alfred pulls into the hangar.

He's tucked into the backseat with a crisp blanket dangling around his shoulders. His eyes trail to the blaring numbers on the bat mobile's dashboard. They tell him a lot of things – the year, the time, the location of the alerts' picked up from the police radio.

It also tells him the mileage, and Jason doesn't think he's ever seen a number quite that high on any car.

"Master Jason." Alfred's voice is as even as ever; Jason applauds the Wayne family's choice in butler. "Would you like to step out?"

The alerts are still going off; a _beep_ here, another one three seconds later. Sometimes codes are mentioned – _541, 332, a fucker with a chainsaw_ – and sometimes all Jason hears is the hissing of static. He remembers these sounds. They're good sounds.

(_That means him, right? Can I go? I can handle it, I swear, you don't need to __**coddle**_ _me, Bruce—_)

Jason takes a breath.

He feels like his _bones_ are gasping, like his skin is about to bubble, burst (all over _again_). His mouth tastes like ashes, his tongue trips over the sounds—but he gets it out. The word. The simple, simple word that only sounds half mangled.

_Okay_.


	2. safety net

notes: takes place directly after oil change. features a stone-faced Bruce, savior Dick, and my-training-did-not-cover-this Alfred. alsoalso, I'm pretty much picking themes out of a meager hat, so feel free to suggest any. :)

* * *

Dick feels like he's living in a museum, complete with wax figures and tight-lipped curators.

Bruce is at one end of the table, Jason at the other, and Alfred hovers in between, staring at the tea tray he'd brought over an hour ago. No one's bothered to make a move toward it - no one's bothered to make a move since Dick had insisted that the cave was no place for a reunion.

Now Dick's starting to think that the cave is the perfect place for this sort of reunion, where Jason, the not-dead boy, stares at the table, and Bruce, the woefully-inept father, stares at his not-dead not-son.

Dick is seventeen and filled with some kind of teenage rebellion, which is why he had packed up and gone for Bludhaven as soon as socially possible. He'd never meant to come home for an extended period, and sure as hell had never meant to come home to see the boy that had inadvertently driven him away. But he's here - and Dick's more than a little guilty - and Jason's still in the ragged suit his burned body had been _buried_ in, and Dick knows that it's past time to swallow and lock away whatever jealousy (not jealousy - more like a viscous _why the hell are you replacing me _type of feeling) he'd had towards Jason.

He knows that.

He really, really does.

Dick just can't understand why _Bruce_ is having such a hard time figuring out that it's _okay_ to move on, to look forward. Dick is seventeen and he's done it. It shouldn't be hard for Bruce.

But it is (of course it is), and it's why their piecemeal family is gathered around the table like there's a guillotine at their heads.

Of the four of them, Dick is the most tactile, so naturally he's been twitching in his seat. He'd tried to wait for someone to make the first move but it's been an hour and Jason isn't any less alive, so it falls - as usual - to him.

"Alfred kept your room," Dick says to the air. He sort-of sees Jason glance his way, his eyes decidedly more…_blank_ than Dick can remember. "It's late, and you're probably…" _Tired_ is the word Dick was going to use, but Jason's technically been sleeping for a year. "…You probably need some time to adjust," Dick says at last, inwardly cringing.

The old Jason would have pushed away from the table, bit out something like _**you** need time to adjust, circus freak_, and stalked off.

This Jason keeps his eyes on the table and rises slowly. The chair squeaks against the tiles, and Dick is reminded of when Alfred would chastise him for doing the same.

Alfred says nothing, and Jason stands for a moment, fingers balanced on the table's edge. Like a tightrope, Dick thinks, just one step away from a fall.

Unless there's a net, and Dick has always been ridiculously good at catching people.

"Come on," he says, getting up and pushing his own chair in with a hip. He doesn't look at Bruce or at Alfred; these are unknown waters and Dick really has no idea what they could do to help, if they even know how to help. "I'll walk with you."

If he were a braver person - or maybe just a stupider one - Dick would have reached out and put a hand on Jason's bony, still-fourteen year old shoulder, and steered him out of the dining room. Instead, Dick leads the way out, counting the slow, steady steps of his not-brother trailing behind him.

True to Dick's word, Jason's room is exactly as he had left it: the sheets are rumpled, there are boxers peeking out from under the closet, and a stack of sci-fi books threaten to tumble in the corner. There isn't a spot of dust to be found, and Jason stands in the middle, not touching a thing.

"I'm across the hall," Dick says from the doorway. Jason nods carefully, only half-facing him, and Dick shuffles out, closing the door softly behind him.

His room is literally across Jason's, the door an exact copy save for the large, _do not enter_ sign tacked to it at eye-level. It's near enough that Dick would be able to hear a struggle or shouts or anything, really.

It's nearing three and he's going to regret it later, but Dick settles down next to Jason's door, head tilting against the wall, knees drawn up close.

The morning tends to bring clearer thoughts and better ideas. In a few hours' time, Clark and Diana and Babs will have arrived, pale-faced but ready to punch sense into them, and Dick's more than willing to wait.


	3. echo

notes: so far these are all in chronological order, so _echo_ follows _safety net_...I think they'll stay that way, for simplicity's sake. alsoalso, babs's characterization is pretty much based on her character in the other animated series (namely, The Batman and B:TAS, though more of the former).

* * *

"I just don't _get _it." Babs is wide-eyed and jittery, hands fluttering in the air. "It—it makes no _sense_."

Dick wants to tell her that their world never makes sense, seeing as how they've been to pocket dimensions and to planets only vaguely known to man, but that'll only earn him a glare and a half-hearted bob on the head so he refrains. Babs, of course, takes no notice of his silence: she keeps on talking, blabbering on and on about how there are rules to life and Jason being in the room across the hall breaks _every_ rule.

"There has to be an explanation," she says at last. Her pacing comes to an end and she perches beside him on the edge of his bed. "Bruce is running the usuals, right? Facial-recognition and sweeps and—"

"Babs." She turns, and Dick offers her a tired smile. "He's working on it."

"But not on Jason," Babs says, rubbing her eyes. Dick knows that she, like him, spent last night doing her own kind of vigil; Babs's involved triple-checking security cameras and listening to every scrap of radio gossip they'd collected over the past month. "He's not working on Jason _at all_. I just got here and even I can tell that he hasn't said a word to him."

It's not that surprising, since it's Bruce, but Dick doesn't say that either. "I think he's trying to make sure that it _is_ Jason, instead of…you know."

Diana had been the one to bring it up. Clark had shot down the idea as soon as she'd said it, but Bruce had leapt on it without thinking and had holed himself up in the cave since. Jason could be a fake, Diana had said, not unkindly. It could be an attempt to make you all lose control.

Babs laughs; it comes out as a short, desperate sound that makes Dick want to wince. "What?" she asks, shaking her head. "He wants to make sure that his son is really back? God, I know Bruce is a paranoid bastard but most people would be _happy_, they'd be crying and they wouldn't… They wouldn't just shut _off_."

"Bruce isn't most people. You know that."

Her head rises, and for a second it looks like she's about to jump into another tirade. But then Babs sighs, the tension leaking from her shoulders, and she says, "That doesn't give him the right to act like this. Jason is his _son_. That should mean something."

Dick's quite sure that it does mean something to Bruce—probably means everything, when he thinks about how careful Bruce had been when raising him—but it doesn't change the fact that Bruce doesn't have parents. Bruce has Alfred, and though he's a godsend and everything, Alfred's always made sure to respect the distance between them. There isn't anyone else around for Bruce to emulate so he muddles his way through, taking note and experimenting and treating the whole thing like one grand science project. Dick doesn't blame him since it's worked more often than not, but Jason is…special. More so now than before.

"This isn't going to end well, is it," Dick says softly. He toys with his shoelaces, watching the light from the window reflect off of the aglets. He feels Babs sigh again; she makes it into a full body motion when she's scared, and Dick's seen it too many times already.

"This shouldn't have happened," she says. "It's not right, and it really, really shouldn't have happened."

He sets his feet back on the floor, idly glances at the muddy imprints left on his sheets, and drapes an arm around Babs's shoulders. She leans into him slowly, her hair tickling his chin. They used to sit like this a lot, before. Back when Dick had only barely been Robin, and their biggest worries had been finding the right kind of spandex to wear underneath their school uniforms.

"He's your brother, too," he says after a few moments have passed. "He looked up to you more than me. Thought you were awesome since you could kick my ass" —Babs snorts, and Dick ignores how it sounds more like a sob— "and he'll be happy to see you again."

"He's supposed to be _dead_," Babs says again, like she has nothing _left_ to say. "You can't just…get around that."

"We will," he says firmly. "We have to. He's our brother. We're gonna take care of him, Babs."

He should add 'this time around,' but he doesn't because Babs has always known him best and she hears it all the same.

"We're gonna take care of him," she repeats, fingers grasping the fabric of Dick's shirt. "We're gonna take care of him."

It becomes a mantra in their minds. Dick wonders if it'll ever take over the guilt, the voice that screams _you should have saved him then._


	4. apple redux

notes: so writing the golden trio is Not Fun. trying to figure out Bruce's head in the yj-universe, also Not Fun. :'D

* * *

Clark met Bruce when they were fumbling around in too-long capes. His impression then had been that Bruce was halfway insane and mostly condemned to the ghosts that seemed to linger around him. His impression now isn't all that different, though with each addition to his family, Bruce…eased up. His crusade continued, it would continue until the man himself was long dead, but it wasn't as — all-consuming anymore.

Then Jason died, and Bruce found himself with a new ghost. A new voice in the dark to ask _why couldn't you save me?_

"You need to get over yourself," Clark says, echoing the words that had once been directed towards him. "He's back, and he needs you."

Diana glances at him, though she doesn't say anything. Between the two of them, Clark's convinced that Diana's better at getting through Bruce's thick skull — probably, he thinks, because she doesn't pull her punches despite Bruce being very mortal — but on their way here, she'd said that Clark would have to shoulder most of this conversation.

"_He's going to be…confused,_" she'd said. "_You have to understand — he is a man of logic. Immortality and boys rising from the dead, regardless of everything he's seen, won't make sense to him. The nuances of mankind…_" She'd shrugged, reminding him that she had, quite literally, been exposed to his world via crash. "_It would be better for you to try to explain._"

Bruce doesn't answer, instead typing away at the batcave's super-computer. It's not surprising, considering that Clark's been talking at Bruce for the better part of three hours, and Bruce hasn't said a word.

"Do you really think he's not Jason?" Clark asks in desperation. Beside him, Diana shifts uncomfortably. She had been the one to suggest that it could all be an elaborate ploy, and while a valid assumption, Clark just thinks Bruce is using it to justify his refusal to talk to the boy. "Come _on_, Bruce — you've run every test on his blood and short of _dissecting_ him, you won't find anything else."

Silence. Clark has to take a deep breath to refrain from chucking something at his head. With his strength, it would only reduce Bruce to a red stain and Clark doesn't want to raise another people-wary boy.

"When Kon showed up," Clark says, staring intently at the back of Bruce's head, "you told me that he needed a father. It didn't matter what _I_ thought — he needed a father. I admit that it took me time — too long, maybe. But Kon's a good kid. He understood. Jason…" He trails off, remembering the volatile, slow-to-trust boy that Bruce had brought home. "Jason needs you now. He needs to make sure that you aren't going to abandon him."

Like his mother did, Clark wants to add. Like his father did, like your parents did to you.

A minute goes by, and another. All Clark can hear is the steady sound of their heartbeats, the rush of water behind them, and the distant murmur of voices: Dick, Barbara, and occasionally, Jason. Then he hears Diana's bones creak as she puts a hand on his shoulder.

"We'll be upstairs," she says quietly. She spares a look in Bruce's direction, and apparently deciding that she'd already put a bad idea in his head, another one couldn't hurt: "You're scared of what will happen when he finds out. It might be better if you're the one to tell him."

The typing stops abruptly. The computer's screen doesn't offer a reflection, but Clark can imagine Bruce's face anyway: still, like stone, like that second before a gun punched through your stomach.

"Upstairs," Diana says again, and the hand on Clark's shoulder tightens.

"I've done all I can do," Clark says once they're in the dining room. He drags a hand through his short hair, and somehow it comes back with a coating of black strands. Another thing to blame on Bruce. "He's so — he's a _hypocrite_," Clark decides. "That's his son up there, and he can't even be happy that he's back?"

"He's scared," Diana says. She traces the edge of her bracelet and shrugs. "I told you — this makes no sense to him. He needs to understand _how_ it happened first. It's…it's how he keeps himself sane, I think," she adds carefully. "It's easy to forget he's not like us."

"That's not an excuse," Clark says, shaking his head. It's really not — for all that he himself is an alien, Clark is just as human as Bruce. The whole monsters and magic thing leaves him shaking at night too; it's not Bruce-specific, and it's not a shield for him to hide behind. "And it doesn't matter — what you said before is true. If Bruce doesn't tell him, Jason's going to figure it out on his own and _that_ blowup is something we can all do without."

"It's happening either way," Diana says, mouth a flat line. "Whether Bruce tells him or he finds out on his own… It's happening."


	5. antidote

notes: to **San** - yup, this is pre-season two. to be more exact, it's currently mid-June 2014. canon says that Tim became Robin in early 2015, so I'd assume he confronted Bruce in mid-to-late-2014. for this series, Jason shows up a month before that confrontation. Tim is around, he just hasn't involved himself yet.

other notes: this series is told from differing points of views, so what was in one chapter might not necessarily be true in the next. example: Dick thinks Jason looked up to Babs more and thinks it was in a positive way. Jason thinks Babs is _smarter_ than Dick, and that's pretty much it. also - Jason's definitely an unreliable narrator, so he's not always right.

* * *

"It was your birthday last week," Babs says. "It was pretty rainy for June, but…we went out to see you." She's cringing before the words are even fully out of her mouth, and feeling the damage already done, she mumbles, "Um…happy fifteenth."

Dick's downstairs arguing with Clark and Diana, and Alfred's probably cleaning out of frustration, so Jason is left with Barbara. The same Barbara that had, after learning of Dick's decision to emancipate himself from Bruce, never spoken to him unless absolutely necessary.

Jason doesn't hate her. He gets blame and the relief that comes with it. He just…doesn't see why she's so strung up on trying to make him 'better,' trying to get him used to everything again. She never cared to his face before, and he doesn't see why she should start now.

But Dick had made him promise to behave ("_Just…give her some slack, okay? We're all family, and…we all have to try better this time_"), so Jason shrugs whenever she talks and holds back his words.

"You were only…_gone_ for six months," Babs says, hesitantly. She leans forward, and the light shining through Dick's bedroom window hits her hair almost perfectly. Jason belatedly remembers from the handful of weeks he'd been in Gotham Academy that Babs Gordon's hair is the stuff of legends and many pitiful sonnets. "So I guess — I guess, you know, you can be fifteen and not fourteen, even if you are technically."

He shrugs. He's not too concerned about age, or a missing six months. He's more concerned about what they're going to do to him _now_: school again? Or maybe another foray into the Robin costume, though Jason's not sure he can look at it without wanting to vomit.

"The team will be happy," Babs tries. He glances at her sideways, and sees the hopeful expression plastered on her face. Jason manages not to grimace; he doesn't _get_ her, or any of this. "They…they really missed you."

He's sure they did: Jason Todd, second Robin, the one who'd ousted their beloved, maniacal Robin and driven him out of his own home, his own team. Out of them all, Artemis and M'gann had been the only ones to act like he was _Jason_, not Dick II. Out of them all, they're the only ones Jason'd bothered to think about when he'd crawled out of his messy, suffocating grave.

But they're off doing their own things, not even aware that the kid they'd once let trail after them is back and alive and breathing fresh, clean air.

Babs shifts on the bed, the sheets crinkling beneath her. Alfred had mentioned to him that in the year Dick's been gone, he's only visited twice and stayed overnight once; in that time, Dick's room changed from a haphazard teenager's abode into something that looks more like a guest room, complete with stiff sheets and an impersonal air. Completely the opposite from Jason's room, and he has to wonder if Alfred had unconsciously hoped the dead son would come back before the angry one.

"I know you don't want to talk about it." Jason would snort, if he thought it would pass Dick's "be nice" rule. He and Babs have been in the same room for near half an hour; he knew she would crack eventually. "But — do you remember…anything?"

What Jason knows about Babs is half a year old and mostly gathered from Alfred's vague comments and the grapevine at the various schools he'd attended. Everything sums up to: Jim Gordon's daughter, Batgirl, Dick's best friend, and impossibly smart. If Dick embodies the true meaning of Bruce's campaign, then Babs is the logistics behind it all. She's probably smarter than Bruce was at her age, and Jason knows that if he were to tell her what little he actually knows, Babs would have it all figured out in minutes.

Jason doesn't want it figured out, though — doesn't really want to dig through the memories of him waking up, dirt in his lungs, caked to his face, underneath his skin, and the flashes of eery green light afterwards — so he shrugs. Again. And he sees Babs scowl from the corner of his eye.

"People don't just come back from the dead," she says. He turns his head to look at her fully and is mildly pleased at the spots of color on her cheeks. Babs is pretty, but she's halfway ugly in her rage and it makes him happier than it should. "Everything has a price, Jason, and if we can't figure out _what_ brought you back, how do you know it won't just…take you away again?"

His shoulders stop midway through another shrug. He doesn't have to look at Babs to see her eyes light up — he doesn't _want_ to look, and he's standing before he can stop himself. His chair clatters to the ground with an echoing bang, and Babs sucks in a breath.

He should say something to her, he thinks, feeling light-headed. But the words are mangled in his throat, like before, and he settles for shaking his head and getting out of Dick's room and into his own. He hears Babs start to say something — not sorry, more like wait, just _wait_ — but Jason's legs are longer than hers and he's already got his room's door shut by the time she's off the bed.

He's not hyperventilating, he tells himself. He's just — breathing. That rasping, ragged sound is just him breathing. It's harder because he went without for so long, that's all. He's fine. He's absolutely fine.

The wood is soft against his back as he slides down the door, hitting the carpeted floor heavily. He presses his palms to his eyes, and counts his breaths in the dark.

One. Two. Three. _I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine._ Four. Five.

Around twenty-six, he feels his heart rate start to even out and the shuddering in his lungs cease. His fingers dig into his scalp, pulling at his hair — he's in new clothes now, showered, but he can still _smell_ the graveyard lingering around him, sinking into his hair, his skin.

That's fine. That's fine, because he's fine, and he's going to _stay_ fine. The only thing that can take him away, put him back into the ground, is the thing that killed him the first time.

And the Joker, at least, is dead. He's dead, Jason's not, and everything is going to be just fine.


End file.
